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...So for pretty much the entirety of the first-person shooter craze, I always wanted to see more. Chalk it up to the grotesquely curious side of my brain, but I always wondered, when I was sniping from halfway across the map, did I actually hit that character in the heart? Most games treat a shot to the torso as a shot to the limb -- most modern games have begun to reward headshots, but not all of them employ diverse hit location to any vaguely-anatomical degree. And yes, maybe I've always been a little sick in the head to wonder, but...what exactly would that bullet have done? Puncture a lung? The heart? What exactly happened to that supersonic slug of lead?
Well, either I'm not entirely as twisted in my brain as I thought -- or there's a hell of a lot of people just as messed up as I am (in this mindset, at least). Meet Sniper Elite V2. It's a pretty basic WWII first-person shooter with a few grudgingly-applied stealth elements, limited weapon selection, and typical AI. The distinctive feature -- the only reason I downloaded and played the demo for two straight days and the reason I actually bought the game -- is its x-ray killcam. Make a particularly impressive kill and the action goes into slow-motion, following the shallow arc of the bullet as it spins its way across the battlefield and through the body of your target, shattering bones, exploding organs, all in intricate, exquisite detail.
That kill sequence is not pre-rendered.
There are a few other aspects to the game -- the ballistics engine seems half-hearted, taking wind and breathing into account, sure, but still lacks a little something. You can employ trip-wires, land mines, grenades and, my personal favorite, an infinite number of rocks to throw, making noise and hopefully distracting your opponents (though I rarely use them, preferring the more, well, direct cranial-percussive route). Missions are painfully linear, but they compensate by occasionally throwing an absolute horde of willing Nazi meatshields your direction, at least making the human shooting gallery a bit more entertaining and urgent.
So far my two favorite moments have come from the demo, in which you're tasked to ambush an armored convoy and kill a high-value target. I played this part -- I don't think I'm exaggerating -- a hundred or so times. At one point the HVT took shelter behind a large street sign with a Nazi soldier, and one of my more desperate shots actually hit the soldier's grenade, detonating it and turning the soldier and the HVT into chunky salsa. On the next run-through, the HVT was running for cover when one of my shots came in a little low and actually exploded both of his...wait, were those his kidneys? They looked a little low to be...no, those weren't kidneys. *cringe*
Maybe this says more about me than a deck full of Rorschach tests, but I'm enjoying this entirely too much. Yes, there's an achievement for inflicting ocular trauma ("Deadeye"), and there's no way in God's green earth I'd ever recommend this for anyone under the age of, well, me, and maybe showing interest and enjoyment in this macabre piece of gaming is smoking-gun evidence of a sick and twisted mind. But! But at least I have the satisfaction of knowing that no matter how wrong I am for always wondering about this sort of thing, there are people who actually went about programming and rendering it, so maybe I'm not the most lost soul in the world.
But then, I wouldn't be surprised if any of those people have sleepless nights now.
Well, either I'm not entirely as twisted in my brain as I thought -- or there's a hell of a lot of people just as messed up as I am (in this mindset, at least). Meet Sniper Elite V2. It's a pretty basic WWII first-person shooter with a few grudgingly-applied stealth elements, limited weapon selection, and typical AI. The distinctive feature -- the only reason I downloaded and played the demo for two straight days and the reason I actually bought the game -- is its x-ray killcam. Make a particularly impressive kill and the action goes into slow-motion, following the shallow arc of the bullet as it spins its way across the battlefield and through the body of your target, shattering bones, exploding organs, all in intricate, exquisite detail.
That kill sequence is not pre-rendered.
There are a few other aspects to the game -- the ballistics engine seems half-hearted, taking wind and breathing into account, sure, but still lacks a little something. You can employ trip-wires, land mines, grenades and, my personal favorite, an infinite number of rocks to throw, making noise and hopefully distracting your opponents (though I rarely use them, preferring the more, well, direct cranial-percussive route). Missions are painfully linear, but they compensate by occasionally throwing an absolute horde of willing Nazi meatshields your direction, at least making the human shooting gallery a bit more entertaining and urgent.
So far my two favorite moments have come from the demo, in which you're tasked to ambush an armored convoy and kill a high-value target. I played this part -- I don't think I'm exaggerating -- a hundred or so times. At one point the HVT took shelter behind a large street sign with a Nazi soldier, and one of my more desperate shots actually hit the soldier's grenade, detonating it and turning the soldier and the HVT into chunky salsa. On the next run-through, the HVT was running for cover when one of my shots came in a little low and actually exploded both of his...wait, were those his kidneys? They looked a little low to be...no, those weren't kidneys. *cringe*
Maybe this says more about me than a deck full of Rorschach tests, but I'm enjoying this entirely too much. Yes, there's an achievement for inflicting ocular trauma ("Deadeye"), and there's no way in God's green earth I'd ever recommend this for anyone under the age of, well, me, and maybe showing interest and enjoyment in this macabre piece of gaming is smoking-gun evidence of a sick and twisted mind. But! But at least I have the satisfaction of knowing that no matter how wrong I am for always wondering about this sort of thing, there are people who actually went about programming and rendering it, so maybe I'm not the most lost soul in the world.
But then, I wouldn't be surprised if any of those people have sleepless nights now.